Need to pack some meat on your calves? Here’s what you do. Load up some weight on a seated calf raise machine. Do as many full reps as you normally do. I go pretty heavy on these for 5 sets of 6 to 10 reps. Now for the fun part:
 
Immediately after completing your last set, stay on the machine and start bouncing the weight on your knees. Yeah, bounce! It’s sort of like how a momma bounces a baby on her knee. These are just rapid, little bounces somewhere in the middle of a full-range-of-motion calf raise.
 
It’s important to concentrate the force of the bouncing on the balls of your feet--the parts of your feet connected to your big toes.
 
The first time you try these, go for 5 to 10 bounces and work up from there. Of course, the number of bounces you do just depends on how much weight you’ve got on the machine. I generally bounce with the same weight I used for the full reps. So it’s like I’m bouncing a 250 lb baby.

And I like to bounce to music on my iPod. Once you start bouncing to music, it’s hard to stop. See if you can bounce throughout the entirety of your favorite song. Bounce until your calves are burning like hell.
 
Incorporate calf bouncing into your regular calf workouts three times a week and it will make a huge difference.


Copyright © 2007 John S. Howard. All Rights Reserved.